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Please Remember: Members are only permitted to share their own experiences. Members are not qualified to give medical advice. Additionally, everyone manages their health differently. Please be respectful of other people's opinions about their own diabetes management.
I wasn't sure if you were asking me - but it hit me like a truck - I was walking with sticks after about 3 weeks taking Atorvastatin and Metformin, my hips knees and ankles were painful, my muscles ached, I became unable to recall a lot of things - I sing English Folk music and had to relearn all my songs - luckily I had made a start on writing them down for my daughter, but it took months of work to get them back enough to sing from the words. I had to stick a post it on the photograph on my dresser to remind me which one was my mother. I was burning dinner, forgetting to go shopping, I was unable to concentrate enough to knit.
On top of that Metformin made me explosively faecally incontinent, my insides knotted up really painfully.
My darkest moments were just before Christmas 2016 when I decided that it might be best to kill myself rather than lose my mind completely and end up like the people I had seen in the care home where I worked for a time. Around the solstice it suddenly hit me that every morning when the medication trolley went around, the noise and energy level in the sitting room dropped to almost nothing.
I threw the tablets in the bin. It was a long way back but I think that I managed it after some years.
Oh my - what a dreadful experience. You are the first person I have come across who experienced the severity similar to what I did. Even worse in fact, as I didn't have the memory issues, just the pain, rash, incontinence and depression. I remember telling the GP I would rather have quality of life over quantity. My road back took 9 months, and I now take a non-statin for my cholesterol. It works fine for me without side effects.
He's a strapping 6 foot tall guy, he paints the garden fence, moves furniture, helps with the shopping - but always with my sister as foreman. He just has problems with his memory.
I had exactly the same thing happen to me - momentarily unable to recall what I'd gone into a room or upstairs, or en route to a perfectly familiar place I'd take the wrong road.
It is because our brain is made with cholesterol and as the statin crosses the blood brain boundary it rips out some fairly essential abilities to learn and to remember.
Drummer i am so sorry to hear everything you went through, but glad you was able to turn things around after bining the meds, i have never been on metformin, i have heard of a few horror stories about them. I don't think id take them if offered. do you mind telling me how you got your diabetes into remission? My current Hb A1c is 57
Basically by doing Atkins - but the way that Dr A intended not the version described in the media.
The big difference to 'normal' eating was I eliminated grain as that was an easy option, and it never really felt right for me.
Even as a child I never ate a lot, so I began having two meals a day, morning and evening as that was the easiest way to have home cooked meals rather than struggling to find low carb foods when out of the house.
He's a strapping 6 foot tall guy, he paints the garden fence, moves furniture, helps with the shopping - but always with my sister as foreman. He just has problems with his memory.
I had exactly the same thing happen to me - momentarily unable to recall what I'd gone into a room or upstairs, or en route to a perfectly familiar place I'd take the wrong road.
It is because our brain is made with cholesterol and as the statin crosses the blood brain boundary it rips out some fairly essential abilities to learn and to remember.
Is he on one of the Statins (like Rosuvastatin) that doesn’t (or is less likely) to cross the blood brain barrier? If not, and he’s determined to carry on taking them, would he swap and try it?
Is he on one of the Statins (like Rosuvastatin) that doesn’t (or is less likely) to cross the blood brain barrier? If not, and he’s determined to carry on taking them, would he swap and try it?
My sister has tried to get him to question the need, but both my brother in law and his GP are entrenched now - he just gets a repeat prescription year after year. It is sad really, but we can only sympathise as it is someone else's life.
My sister has tried to get him to question the need, but both my brother in law and his GP are entrenched now - he just gets a repeat prescription year after year. It is sad really, but we can only sympathise as it is someone else's life.
Many GPs now have a clinical pharmacist as part of the practice so could he get a medication review with them as they may be more receptive to recommending a change, in any even people normally get a prescription review every so often.
Could your sister persuade him to ask for one.
She could accidentally spill the pills down the sink, did I really suggest that.
I had exactly the same thing happen to me - momentarily unable to recall what I'd gone into a room or upstairs, or en route to a perfectly familiar place I'd take the wrong road.
It is because our brain is made with cholesterol and as the statin crosses the blood brain boundary it rips out some fairly essential abilities to learn and to remember.
While we sympathise with members who have experienced severe side effects from any medication, it is really important to set these experiences in the context of evidence as a whole.
Lots of work has been done examining the potential for statins to impact cognitive function and found the risks to be exceptionally low. Including long-term studies of large populations
Members are asked not to unduly frighten newbies, or those considering, or being recommended statins to reduce the very real risks of heart attack and stroke.
We sympathise with individual experiences, but it doesn’t do to terrify people who are extremely unlikely to experience the same.
